Archaic archetypes and symbols of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples: to debunk the myth of a single people

Abstract

The article models the protocultural fields of the archetypal-mythological memory of Ukrainians and Russians as consisting of divergent elements. The core of the fields are archaic cultural archetypes and archetypal motifs “mother”, “field”, “plowman”, “labor”, “individualism”, and “equality” for Ukrainians, and “father”, “distance”, “vastness”, “inertia”, “collectivism”, and “submission” for Russians. The сore archetypes determine the differences in the ethnic mentality of two peoples and can enter the subsequent semiospheres and political mythology without significant adaptation, transforming into symbols of national identity. The periphery is formed by archetypes common, but re-articulated in subsequent semiospheres to be adapted to national narratives of different periods. The general archetype Sacred space was associated in the archaic consciousness of Ukrainians with the “House”, symbolizing the maternal principle and the Motherland, while the Russians embodied this archetype in the symbols of the Holy Mountain, metonymically expanded to the symbols of “Holy Rus”, Heartland, Rimland, defining the motif of messianism in symbolic politics of Russia. The archetype of the Hero is manifested in Ukrainian folklore by the images of the legendary plowmen, who conquer the steppe elements from the nomads, while in the Russian ethnic consciousness it is interpreted as the Messiah-Savior of the world.